


Loss

by Renrij



Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renrij/pseuds/Renrij
Summary: In Craglorn the vestige finds it difficult to focus on the present after losing everything in the planemeld.





	Loss

**Author's Note:**

> This is just my brief introduction for the events of ESO, attempting to add a bit of weight to the invasion of Nirn. The game starts on a truly harrowing note that I feel is really not reflected by the casual attitude with which the vestige and Lyris escape Craglorn.

Within these dead rock walls, the only happiness for us comes from fond recollection. Memories so soft and distant they seem like whispers. All too soon, these are stripped away, leaving nothing but the husks of the men and mer we once were. The scraps of identity left to me now are those which were strongest in life, but even now they fade like paintings abandoned beneath the desert sun. When I concentrate, I can almost see her face sometimes. At least on good days, such as they are. Always, I can hear her voice. It calls to me from the cracks of my cell, and from the fraying corners of my mind. 

“Ziq! Jo’Ziq, my esteemed brother, come see the gift I have brought you,” she exclaims, laughter bubbling through her speech. I am warm again, for the unforgiving sun and the baking sands of Elsweyr make even the air itself quaver with energetic heat. Her joy infects me, even as I shake my head reprovingly at her antics. She hands me a cat doll, a common toy in the markets; this one wearing an exaggerated wizard’s cap and cloak.  
“It’s you!” she beams.  
“What are you, an overgrown kitten? If you don’t stop acting like a child, you will never win yourself a respectable husband.”  
“Pah! Since when do people care for what is respectable? Only our father and his tribesmen pretend to, and that is because their ‘warrior’s honor’ makes them wealthy men.”  
“Fair enough, but they still disowned me for choosing to forgo it. You should be careful, else their foolish concepts endanger you too, Ma’Asshi.”  
She shifts uncomfortably and opens her mouth to respond, but we have already been spotted.  
“Come away from that renrij,” the armored soldier commands sternly.  
She meets my eyes in silent apology, but if this is the last time I see her I have only myself to blame. The Imperials who claim Khajiit are nothing but liars and thieves evidently never encountered my family. The man who was once my father glares with undisguised scorn until he has his obedience. She leaves.

But I can still hear her.

“Ziq!” she screams, repeatedly and urgently. It’s hard to hear her over the growling and keening of the lesser daedra pouring from the gate. It’s hard to hear them over the crash of the great grappling hooks burrowing into the ground, smashing through friend and foe alike. I try to reach her but I am thrown by the careless swipe of a hulking daedroth. The sky spins. I force myself forward again but, wheezing and crawling, all I see is blood and soot and grime. I fall again into a corpse-choked gully. I notice her sightless eyes gazing down on me from the opposite slope. The dremora watch me and laugh drily; the emptiness chills me to the bone. My vision fades, but somehow their mockery still echoes through the frozen air.

It is so cold here. Again and again my thoughts turn to that searing pain before my soul was stripped. But still it is nice, in some ways, to feel the old hurts again. I would sooner feel that than empty nothingness. Nothing is what we all are now, but if I try hard enough I can still want more. Somewhere inside me, I still feel the sting of my father’s insults. The listless spirits moldering away in Coldharbour might be nothing more than pathetic scum now, but we were once something greater.

“Jo’Ziq.” The voice is not hers, but that of some elder. An astral projection come perhaps to marvel at the damned as their sanity withers. I am vaguely curious why he would bother to learn our names. After all, we do not. Regardless, he insists on speaking with me. To speak of rescue. Rescue for me and for him, and then rescue for the entire world. But he is a fool to come here to this bare cell, for my world is already dead and gone.

I doubt there is even enough of me left to save.


End file.
